New Conflict of Interest System Launched at Penn State

The COI Program in the Office for Research Protections is very happy to announce that Penn State’s new electronic disclosure, review and management system – “COINS” (Conflict Of INterest System) - is now live and available for all Penn State employees needing to disclose “significant financial or business interests” (please see RA20) related to research. You can access COINS at http://coins.psu.edu

Starting June 1, 2010, all new Disclosure of "significant financial or business interests" and all Annual Updates to previously completed Disclosures will be made electronically on COINS and we will no longer be accepting paper Disclosure Forms. In conjunction with the Hershey College of Medicine COI team and the Office of Research Information Systems (“ORIS”), we have completed extensive testing and piloting of the electronic Disclosure Form and the COINS website with researchers and other staff at University Park and the College of Medicine. We believe the electronic Disclosure Form, or “Smart Form,” will be a more efficient and user friendly way for researchers to submit disclosures of their significant financial or business interests because the “Smart Form” knows to skip over questions that are not applicable to certain individuals and eliminates repetitive questions that were necessary on the paper forms. The electronic submission and processing of the Disclosure Form on COINS will also make the disclosure of significant financial or business interests easier because the Form will now be submitted electronically to Department Heads and the COI Office and there will no longer be the need to circulate paper forms for review and signatures.

Although the website is accessible to all employees with a Penn State access id and password, the COINS site should be accessed ONLY IF an employee is making a Disclosure or is updating a Disclosure already on file with the COI Program. More specific instructions and details will be emailed separately to all researchers who already have a current Disclosure and COI Management Plan on file with the COI Program. Individualized and/or group training on COINS for researchers and Department Heads can also be arranged by contacting the COI Program Staff.